GAUR TO BLAME FOR HIS DEATH BY FALL­ING OFF TRAIN: RAIL­WAYS

BHOPAL: The Rail­ways on Tues­day said Ra­jeev Gaur, ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent of JP Power Ven­tures Lim­ited, was him­self re­spon­si­ble for his death in a fall from a run­ning train on Sun­day.

Gaur, 48, had tried to board the South­ern Ex­press on its way to­wards Bhopal at Mandi Bamora sta­tion, but the door of the AC com­part­ment was shut from in­side. He clung to the door han­dle of the coach as the train picked up speed, but fell af­ter 10 min­utes. Rail­ways found Gaur had tried to board a spare coach that was locked and empty, which im­plies his cries for help went un­heard.

“Ra­jeev Gaur, who was sup­posed to board the train from Bina, tried to catch it at Mandi Bamora, where stop­page of the train is just two min­utes. He could not iden­tify his coach and in­stead tried to get into a spare coach, which was closed,” Bhopal-based se­nior cir­cle se­cu­rity com­mis­sioner of Rail­ways, AK Ag­ni­hotri, said in his report on the in­ci­dent. “Fur­ther, he held on to the gate of the train, which was a risky de­ci­sion taken in haste, which led to this un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent for which he, him­self, was re­spon­si­ble,” he added.

The West Cen­tral Rail­way, how­ever, has sus­pended Mandi Bamora sta­tion master Arvind Sahu. Gaur’s per­sonal se­cu­rity of­fi­cer Ram­cha­ran Gur­jar has al­leged that Sahu did not pay heed to his re­quest to stop the train.

Two locked spare AC III-tier com­part­ments were be­ing taken from Hazrat Niza­mud­din (in Delhi) for Se­cun­der­abad sta­tion. It was one of th­ese that Gaur tried to board. There was no pas­sen­ger or at­ten­dant in the coach, the report said.

Gaur’s body was found at Kul­har sta­tion, 8km away from Mandi Bamora sta­tion. He was a cousin of Jaypee Group’s ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Manoj Gaur and worked out of Bina.